Sorry, Ithaca is gone: Grieving the Lost Timeline
The lost timeline: drink coffee and notice the sprouts.
In the Sardinian town where I was born, there is a specific ritual after a funeral. There is no return to the house of the deceased. Instead, the small group of mourners moves directly to a local bar a space where coffee and alcohol exist side-by-side.
There is a standing together, consuming a cornetto and a cappuccino, engaging in the jarringly mundane act of eating, or perhaps just having a very burned espresso with a lot of sugar. The psychological purpose is ancient: death is not brought into the home. The house must remain the territory of the living; the dead stay at the cemetery. This act of consumption grounds the body in a reality that has permanently shifted.
But there is something quietly terrible about that moment at the bar. Standing there, shattered, it becomes clear that the world is still having its morning cappuccino. While a soul was crossing into the hell of its own grief, the world kept spinning. It did not wait.
This is the mourning of a timeline that is permanently lost. It is a grief that follows many things: a physical death, a profound realisation, a major life transition, or the moment a mask finally collapses after years of "fake functioning."
The Greeks called this specific pain Nostoi, the "returns." It is the root of nostalgia (nostos, return; algos, pain). It contains the desperate wish to return home, coupled with the devastating impossibility of doing so. Home is a place, a persona, a memory, but more generally, it is a timeline.
When Ulysses descends into the underworld to interrogate Tiresias, the truth is harsh: the Ithaca he left behind no longer exists. Even if he survives the journey, even if he steps foot on the exact same soil, there is no return to what was left. He is changed forever, and the world he left behind has changed without him. There is no loading the previous saved game. When the River Styx is crossed, the bridge burns behind.
Whether it is a late diagnosis or a profound loss, when a timeline vanishes, it reveals a hard reality: the energy to perform is no longer there.
For years, a life may have been lived in a highly active, performative way-running after impossible targets, trying to function in a specific rhythm. An entire identity was built on that sheer, exhausting effort. When that structure falls, the energy is gone.
And here is where the anguish hits: the need to grieve the timeline of the future that was dreamt of, and the version of the self that tried so hard to exist. It manifests as a melancholic undertone, a phantom limb of the person one thought they were supposed to become.
Sometimes, there is a desperate attempt to go back. To put the worn-out mask back on. But truth, once seen, cannot be unseen.
This melancholic undertone, this mourning of a lost timeline, is valid. It is necessary. There is no return to the Ithaca of the past. But the journey from that bitter espresso to truly tasting the present does not happen in an afternoon. Between the collapse of the old timeline and the building of a new one lies a vast, exhausting, and often silent space. Navigating that void is the actual work of mourning a slow, messy, and non-linear process that cannot be bypassed. Yet, when you allow yourself to stay in that liminal space and process the loss, with gentle eyes and compassion, something eventually starts to shift.
It is a different world, yes. But it is still a world where spring arrives. Today, walking in London, the first flowers appeared on the branches; the daffodils are blooming and the muscari are ready to sprout. The end of winter has its own magic.
One can still have a cappuccino, but now it is drunk not to numb the grief, but to taste the present. There are creative ways to inhabit this new space. It is no longer about rebuilding the mask or putting on the makeup of "functioning."
It is simply about finding the new rhythm of this timeline while it lasts, and dancing as the music changes.
